Another year is nearly over and it’s time to reflect on what your business has accomplished this year. Yes, this usually includes making sure that you increased sales and profits, kept your spending down, and can keep your doors open for another year. However, it’s also a time to evaluate whether or not you’ve been taking risks that will open the doors to potential success even wider in the future, and it’s a time to ensure that you’re giving back to the community where you do business.
Taking Risks
Your business success will be limited if your averse to risk. If you’re not comfortable with risk, then learn how to effectively evaluate risk vs. reward so you don’t miss big opportunities. Remember, even small risks can yield great rewards. Simply shifting to a new online storefront platform, a new advertising investment, or a new accounting tool could give your business new exposure or free up some of your time so you can invest freed up money and time into generating more sales.
Not sure how to get started? Sometimes going back to the basics of business can help you effectively evaluate risks. In the absence of a financial modeling expert to help you, start by creating a SWOT analysis where you analyze your business’ strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Filter risks through the SWOT analysis to ensure they align with your business. Next, create a risk vs. reward matrix to determine which risks have the greatest chances of delivering rewards.
Giving Back
The end of the year is also an important time to evaluate how closely you’ve been involved with your community in the past 12 months. To grow your business, it’s important to build relationships with consumers, particularly those people who live in the community where you do business—which includes the online community if yours is an online-only business.
If you’ve been absent from your community of late, now is the time to change that pattern of behavior. There are so many ways to give back to your community as one year closes and another begins. Seek them out and be visible. Involve your employees and demonstrate that social responsibility is as important (if not more so) as sales and profits. Ultimately, other people will benefit from your efforts today, and your efforts will turn into sales and profits for your business in the future.
This post is sponsored by Spark BusinessSM from Capital One® and is the eighth post in a series of eight.
Susan Gunelius
Susan Gunelius is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Women on Business. She is a 30-year veteran of the marketing field and has authored a dozen books about marketing, branding, and social media, including the highly popular Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing, 30-Minute Social Media Marketing, Content Marketing for Dummies, Blogging All-in-One for Dummies and Kick-ass Copywriting in 10 Easy Steps. Susan’s marketing-related content can be found on Entrepreneur.com, Forbes.com, MSNBC.com, BusinessWeek.com, and more. Susan is President & CEO of KeySplash Creative, Inc., a marketing communications company. She has worked in corporate marketing roles and through client relationships with AT&T, HSBC, Citibank, Intuit, The New York Times, Cox Communications, and many more large and small companies around the world. Susan also speaks about marketing, branding and social media at events around the world and is frequently interviewed by television, online, radio, and print media organizations about these topics. She holds an MBA in Management and Strategy and a Bachelor of Science degree in Marketing and is a Certified Professional Career Coach (CPCC).
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